About a week
ago as I was on my way home from work and flipping through my twitter feed when
I came across an article written by a women whose marriage has fallen apart:
She talks of
how the lack of focus on their marriage and rather on their children and work
made a large gap in her relationship with her husband. She assumed everything was okay because the
children were happy and everything was ticking along. He, however, was not happy. He was miserable and left. She has taken part of the responsibility by saying:
“I stopped telling him he was special and I
loved him and wanted to touch him and hold him and listen to him”.
This stopped
me in my tracks.
Here was a
marriage that on paper seemed to work, they were successful in their careers
and having children, but the love was lost.
This hit
very close to home for me.
I have just,
in the last month, started back at work after taking maternity leave with my
first child. I have noticed my attitude
towards my husband in the past month has changed, as I have taken on quite a
bit of stress from transitioning from stay at home mom to a working mom. I guess I could feel myself shutting him off
emotionally and physically and focusing inward to harness my own strength. Also my slight guilt for shipping my son off
to day care twice a week (a very reputable one at that, which drains our bank
account… but that is another can of worms) comes into play. When I come home my immediate focus is on my
son and taking in everything he is doing till he goes down for the night. I see now this is totally wrong of me! I need to go to him for strength and
support. He has been a working dad for
almost a year now, how is he handling it and what is his advice? How am I so blind?
The final
statement of this article was what really caused my “light bulb” moment:
“But most importantly, to all the women who
are busy and tired and thinking everything is okay because your children are happy:
talk to your husband. Tell him you love
him and listen to what he does each day.
Touch him and hold him and make love to him and make sure he is happy. I am sure he will reciprocate”.
Yes! Yes!
Yes! I will! It feels like this random look at this
article by this poor women who is going through such a painful point in her
life, has totally changed my priorities.
It has also come at a timely point as I am throwing myself back into my
career. I need to put my husband up
there in my priorities, he is after all one of the most important people in my
life (I did marry him!) and I should treat him as such.
There is a
great debate out there at the moment about putting you and your partner before
your children. The more I think about it
and especially after reading this article I have to agree. If you don’t have a strong, loving
relationship that acts as the base of your family what example will you set for
your children? Obviously we want to do
everything we can to give our children the best start and opportunities in
life, but now I think you must be mindful that it is not at the detriment of
our marriages or partnerships.
I want to
thank this anonymous woman for her very brave article. While you maybe working through some very
tough things in your marriage, by speaking out, you may have saved me from
going down the same road.
